Shunsuke Takeuchi

Anime casting has a shorthand for the big, quiet one, and Shunsuke Takeuchi has spent most of his career inside it. Born in Tokyo in 1997 and affiliated with 81 Produce, he arrived quickly enough to take Best Rookie Actor at the tenth Seiyu Awards, and the roles that built the reputation are the ones you would predict from the voice: low, unhurried, carrying a weight that suggests physical size before a line of description arrives.

What he does with that is more interesting than the casting implies. Einar in Vinland Saga is the clearest example, a farmhand whose entire moral position is that he would rather grow wheat than kill anyone, and Takeuchi plays the stubbornness rather than the strength. Brawler in Akudama Drive is the opposite tack, a cheerful bruiser with almost no interior life, played at full volume. Kaguragi in Kaiju No. 8, Ryoken Kogami in Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, Zack Walker in Astra Lost in Space and Shiro in Tengoku Daimakyo all sit somewhere between those poles.

Then there is Gudetama, a permanently exhausted egg, which is the credit proving the voice type is a choice rather than a limit. He has also inherited Daisuke Jigen in LUPIN ZERO, a role with decades of history attached and very little room to reinterpret, and he works steadily across sports anime, Aoashi and Burning Kabaddi and Ace of the Diamond, where the job is to sound out of breath and stay intelligible.